Public Barred From Hearing Murder-Case Details

By ROBERT HANLEY

Published: November 19, 1998

NEWTON, N.J., Nov. 18—
A New Jersey judge barred the public and the news media today from hearing details of a suspect's statement in the ambush and murder of two pizza deliverymen at an abandoned house 19 months ago.

In an unusual ruling in a pretrial hearing for the suspect, Thomas J. Koskovich, Judge Reginald Stanton of New Jersey Superior Court kept his courtroom open for legal arguments on the admissibility of the statement and for some testimony by police officers who arrested and questioned Mr. Koskovich about 24 hours after the slayings.

But Judge Stanton closed his courtroom when a state police detective, Sgt. Jack Repsha, was about to begin describing Mr. Koskovich's statement to him reconstructing the murders of the deliverymen, Giorgio Gallara, 24, and his helper, Jeremy Giordano, 22, on April 19, 1997, in Franklin, N.J.

Judge Stanton said Mr. Koskovich's right to a fair trial would be compromised if the details of the statement were published and read by potential jurors, and granted a defense motion not to allow the statement into evidence.

''I am satisfied it would be entirely inappropriate for a potential juror to know of those statements if they are suppressed,'' Judge Stanton said. He rejected a request by lawyers for two New Jersey newspapers -- The Star-Ledger of Newark and The New Jersey Herald, which is published in this community in rural Sussex County -- to keep the hearing open now and later transfer the trial to another venue if not enough impartial jurors were found in Sussex County.

Judge Stanton said he doubted he could find jurors anywhere in New Jersey who would not know the details of Mr. Koskovich's statement if they were published.

Floyd Abrams, a Manhattan lawyer and an expert on the First Amendment, took issue with the ruling. He said the right of the public and the news media to scrutinize courtroom proceedings was rooted in the First Amendment. ''There are extremely rare circumstances when the public can be barred,'' said Mr. Abrams, who is not directly involved in the case. ''But an extraordinarily high burden must be met.''

The motion that prompted Judge Stanton's ruling was unusual in itself. The Sussex County Prosecutor, Dolores Blackburn, asked him to close the pretrial hearing on the ground that Mr. Koskovich's right to a fair trial would be harmed. Customarily, defense lawyers file such motions, but this time the prosecution moved first and the defense joined in.

In his decision, Judge Stanton allowed open testimony on everything except precisely what Mr. Koskovich was said to have told Sergeant Repsha about the killings in two hours of questioning that started about 3 A.M. on April 21, 1997. And he Stanton allowed the parents of both victims, Mr. Giordano's two sisters and Mr. Gallara's fiancee to remain in court.

Mr. Koskovich's lawyers, Pamela Brause and Lucas E. Phillips Jr., contended that his statement should not be allowed as evidence, saying that Mr. Koskovich had not given it voluntarily because he used drugs before his arrest.

But Sergeant Repsha and the arresting officers testified today that Mr. Koskovich was calm, alert, coherent and cooperative after his arrest and willingly waived his right to remain silent.